Diverse & Inclusive Leaders & CEO Activist Podcast by DIAL Global

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis, CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Brendan Vaughan, Editor in Chief of Fast Company.

"There are enough organisations that truly do value work-life balance - the idea that you shouldn't have an always, always, always on culture or you will lose people. That's never been more true than it is these days."

You'll hear about:

- Brendan's evolution as a journalist and how he ended up as the Editor in Chief of Fast Company

- How the meaning of productivity has changed since the pandemic, with people's priorities shifting and how the future of work continues to evolve to meet the needs of modern day.

-  What Diversity means to Brendan,  how D&I has evolved in the media and how to embed D&I into every facet of the industry

- How diversity plays out as it intersects with other facets such as race, disability etc

- The importance of doing the right thing.

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis, CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Margaret Johnston-Clarke, Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for L'Oreal.

"The most important decision I made at the time which I would recommend highly to anyone moving into this sphere today is to really understand the corporate culture of your organisation but also  what the business culture is like."

You'll hear about:

- Margaret's personal and professional story including her wonderfully rich and colourful career and background

- The importance of understanding organisational culture and the intersection between brand, business case and social good

-  How Margaret's role has evolved over the past 20 years, having been carved out because of L'Oreal's foresight about customer needs and the changing landscape

- How to be more outspoken about leadership and social justice issues

- Navigating tricky scenarios like finding the line between personal opinion and corporate communications and the importance of reverse mentoring

-Employee resource groups, employee voice and the importance of both of those in communication

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis, CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Raj Verma, Chief Diversity, Culture+ Ex Officer for Sanofi.

"One of the reasons why I put together the function that I lead today around diversity, culture and experience is because they are the reasons people join and they are the reasons people leave an organization."

You'll hear about:

- Raj's personal and professional story including his childhood moving from a predominantly brown and black neighbourhood to being a minority in his class, his educational background, and his career journey in DIBE starting from his first role in Dagenham, UK

- Why DIBE is so important within an organisation, and why having great people within your organisation is important

- The importance of putting the individual at the centre of transformation strategy, designing things for them and with them

-  The 80/20 rule in creating culture, employee experience being a multi-way relationship and why people stay at an organisation

- The relationship between D&I, ESG and HR

- How Employee Resource Groups at Sanofi have evolved

- Raj's experiences of working in cross-cultural environments including cultural awareness training, building psychological safety into conversations  with people from different cultures, the need to check bias

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis, CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Clay Johnson, Senior Learning Technologist, University of the West of England.

"I think we need to change our educational framework...Modern education needs to address modern societal need. That process is happening within schools at the grassroots. It is happening organically because teachers fundamentally want to establish positive relationships with the people that they teach."

You'll hear about:

- Clay’s personal and professional story including his childhood in a mixed race neighbourhood in South Africa in the 70s, his experience of apartheid, moving to the UK and his life since

- How challenges experienced by minority groups are sometimes viewed through a distant lens, without full appreciation of what they go through and an understanding of the deep-seated legacy issues that arise

- How Clay has modified his own behaviour like many others from minority communities have in response to the ramification of global events or lived experience, for example, making sure that people can see his hands or putting his hood down if he is out walking on his own

-  Clays thoughts on governmental responsibility as well as diversity and inclusion when it comes to education

- Systemic failure within education due to cookie cutter models of success, leading to a need for the individual to be put back at the heart of education.

- How policy, strategy and legislation can be used effectively but policy at high levels is created by politicians and not people who work at grassroots level with lived experience, thus leading to disconnect

- The positive role models that contributed to Clay’s lived experience despite some traumatic times

- The importance of story-telling and actually talking about some of our lived experiences, especially the difficult, challenging ones

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis, CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Scott Walker, CEO of XpertHR, part of the Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions Group.

"You know Millennials and Gen-Z in the workplace are demanding that their organisations are ethical in the way in which they both interact with the world and their communities around them but also how they treat their employees and there is an innate sense of fairness that these employees really are insisting upon and so the people functions within the business are recognising that this is something that we absolutely need to be improving upon and address."

You'll hear about:

- Scott's personal and professional journey including how he came to be CEO of XpertHR and how his present role spearheads industry challenges

-  Thought leadership and adoption of various areas to drive business for good

- The need for organisations to truly be walking the walk that they talk about and the expectation of future generations of leaders 

- The future of XpertHR and their portfolio of organisations that are trying to do business for good

- The importance of working out personal drivers and how they fit into a person's goals

- Insecurity and how to harness the power of fear

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis, CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell, CEO of the 10,000 Interns Foundation.

"When you're leaving school or university you are bombarded with a repeated 'What are you going to do?' The more interesting questions are 'What do you want your life to look like?' or 'What do you want your life to feel like?' Finding the answers to those questions will tell you what you're going to do."

You'll hear about:

- Rebecca's personal and professional journey including the road to becoming CEO of 10,000 interns starting with her family and heritage, background in sport, exposure to multiple cultures, early start as a founder

- The 'isms' that people face especially in high level positions at a young age and as a woman of colour

- The balance between talent and experience and breaking out of the stereotypical shape of what a CEO might look like

- Shame, equity, empathy towards others and modern leadership qualities

- The importance of coaching and mentoring in a leader's journey

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis , CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Nicholas Petche, Editor in Chief for Yahoo UK.

"People are complicated, and we can get blind to this because we think about human relationships in terms of what can and can't be said. What we can do is to create circumstances and the narratives that will enable opportunities to be as wide as possible."

- Nick's personal and professional journey including his global career, how he came to be in his current position and how it impacted his growth.

- The importance of curiousity to learn about people and the need for belonging, highlighting common threads between humans

- What's changed in journalism over the last several years

- The founding of  Yahoo Diversity in Journalism and its impact

- The opportunity gap, the barriers that prevent talent and how to keep feeding in diversity of thought

- Is there now a conflict in diversity and inclusion? Is there a lot of confusion over what Diversity really is, and does it make people afraid to get involved?

- Intersectionality, and Diversity as an agenda that belongs to all

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, Leila McKenzie-Delis , CEO and Founder of DIAL Global speaks to Ben Bengougam, Senior Vice President Human Resources across EMEA for Hilton.

"In order to deserve that proverbial seat at the table, you still have to make a credible link between what you do for your people and business success."

- Ben's personal and professional journey including how he came to be in his current position and how it impacted his leadership style.

- How the role of an HR leader has evolved over the last decades and what is critical for success in this role?

- How the HR leader of today positively impacts ESG initiatives within an organisation.

-How the field of hospitality can be seen as providing hope, by making a difference and providing opportunities within the community that it operates in.

- How Hilton's employee resource groups and similar communities have made an impact on the local and global level.

- The importance of collaborative strategy at Hilton to tackle problems faced and address employee concerns

- How to track ROI and engagement statistics from ERGs

- The importance of creating people well, career inspiration and a key piece of advice.

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

In this week’s podcast, our CEO Leila McKenzie-Delis speaks to Philip Hoggarth, CEO of Communisis and President of OSG Europe

Here’s what they discuss:

- Philip's background and journey including the factors that led him to his current roles and drive his passion for business for good and the employee experience

- How his personal life and journey has shaped him as a leader including his work ethic and discovering himself as a person

- How Philip's goal of transforming Communisis and his D&I goals aligns with his signing the CEO Activist pledge

- Talking about change, the right career and making leaps of faith in order to move forward

- The needs of employees and how to engage with them and create a purpose for people beyond the fabric of the space that they work in

- The importance of creating a feeling of community at work that is greater than the 9-to-5

- The changing nature of Diversity and Inclusion and the importance of leading from the top authentically, with conviction and belief to create a lasting legacy

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn

This week Leila has a conversation with Kalvinder Dhillon, Vice Chair, Tax, Deloitte UK, NSE Deloitte Board Member

What you'll hear about:

💡Kalvinder's personal and professional background, including her heritage as an immigrant and her focus and drive towards success
💡Intersectionality and the fact that it is not a zero-sum game, so there are complexities to D&I that demand collaboration
💡Speaking up, utilising the trickle affect, staying ahead of the curve because D&I affects every aspect of society and business
💡The importance of targeting inclusivity in D&I rather than pillars of D&I and challenging our presumptions of stereotypical diversity
💡The fact that it's important to look from the top down and up from the bottom at diversity, sponsorship and allyship while measuring and managing the effects of various initiatives to continue to evolve and grow
💡The importance of paying attention to the quieter voices in the organisation to achieve deep listening and vibrance of innovation
💡It's not divide and conquer, so the importance of minority groups working together to achieve change.

Continue the conversation on LinkedIn